My NSFW Election

How I voted and learned to love America.

I was always going to vote this year. I may not have been happy with my choice, but I was going to perform my citizenly duty as expected. My country and I had a standing date for engaging in election. It was rote and was being done purely from muscle memory. The emotional engagement had long ago left our relationship.

But then, for the first time in about a decade I really started looking at my country again. An excitement I hadn’t felt since before 2016 started swelling inside me. We started exchanging sly looks at each other and catching each other alone for a few moments to share words of longing whispered to each other. The feel of whispered promises remaining hot in my ears.

I started noticing it again. A caress of new voter registrations. Fingertips brushing over record-breaking fundraising. Eyes locked together as social media caught fire. The smell of musk and desire when jealousy made the former guy start losing control.

And then today, the culmination of all the flirting and promises made. The anticipation was immense. It felt like today would never come and I had blue ballots.

We met at the agreed upon place. I was going to show up early, but I didn’t want to look desperate and needy even though I was very desperate and needy for today to happen. The election worker asked me for my information and I gave it to her. She gave me a look like she knew what I was about to get up to. I tried to keep my face neutral but ended up looking like a boy caught finding his dad’s magazines for the first time. But she handed me my ballot, directed me to the polling booths with the privacy curtains and patted my hand as if to tell me it was ok. Everything was going to be alright.

I took my ballot into our secret room and secured the curtain. My eyes devoured the ballot and then I started voting. It was slow at first, hesitant. My hands shook and I was afraid I might make a mark outside the lines and invalidate everything. Confidence grew with every bubble. By the end, the rhythm of voting set in and the strokes of my pen became faster and faster. I was voting in races I never even knew existed. And then in a last fury of pen strokes it was over. I left the voting both sweaty and spent. I deposited the completed ballot into the counting machine and went outside and enjoyed a post-voital cigarette.

And now I wait to see the results.

It has been a wild ride for all of us. I am confidant that by the end of tonight we will know who won and we will not go to bed unsatisfied. Kamala Harris is going to win big tonight and we can finally start to put Trumpism out of our lives whether Trumpists want it or not.